Night and Day
by rese
Summary: Anders still remembers and though so much has changed, really everything is the same. anders/tabris anders/hawke.


**Night and Day**

By rese

_A/N: a largely uninformed-by-spoilers indulgence into Anders' mind. I just started DA2 today, so I only really know about Anders being part of Justice/a host, and a love interest for Hawke at this stage, which is really old news now, hey. So I'm really sorry if this doesn't gel at all with the actual events in the game. For now I'm enjoying eve myles as merril and the grandeur of Kirkwall. Bioware/ea own dragon age and its characters, not me._

It wasn't right. But then, so little in his life was.

Anders pulled his hands from his hair, trying not to reread the words he'd written on the sheet of parchment before him. It was pointless, it was stupid. Really, it was a lot like a lot of things he did.

Sighing at himself he leaned back in his chair, listening to the cricks in his neck pop awfully at the change in posture. He was becoming an old man in fewer years than it took for him to escape the Tower. He supposed he had the darkspawn to thank for that, their blood coursing under his skin. It was all a little insidious.

Somehow anyway, he always ended up back here, trying to write a letter he would never send.

He thought of chewing his lip, almost started it in the rarest of habits. That was a little too like her though. And she was the problem.

A sigh came from the bed behind him and Anders almost started, further guilt flooding through him. He twisted to look over his shoulder. She was still asleep then. Her soft breathing continued though she now lay unknowingly facing him. It was almost like a silent confrontation, her picturesque repose. If this was a bard's song, one of Leliana's maybe, this would be the moment where he might confess everything to his sleeping lover. She of course would really be awake and it would hurt her to know the truth more than any dream.

He knew she wanted to talk to him about it during the day, when the others laughed and he tried to smile with them. And he could do it too. That wasn't really the problem.

Hawke continued to sleep on, totally unaware of his present turmoil. Maker, was he glad of it. Anders turned back to his letter. The ink had run from where his thumb smudged the last sentence. He hadn't been able to see it, even as his hand wrote the very words that hurt everyone so much. Even now, years later, it was all the same.

Nothing ever really changed. That much, Anders knew.

It was only at night that he thought of her.

She was the moon and Hawke was the sun. She with her dark hair, shining blood red in the light of a candle, her smooth white skin shadowed in tattoos from pirates. And Hawke, her hair every bit as red, only red like the soil against the shores of Lake Calenhad. Golden Hawke, brave and unspoiled, the light to every person that ever met her.

Every night, surer than the moon itself he thought of _her_. Whilst Hawke slept, whether in his bed or hers, he knew who he thought of when the stars came out. Anders slumped his head into his hands and felt like the most pathetic of villains. How could he do this, knowing it would happen – he couldn't control it; Maker he'd tried! – to continue was to be worse than any liar he knew.

She'd never lied to him. He'd felt betrayed, sure, but she'd never outright lied. The worst part was she'd warned him at every step. _"There's something about me you need to know."_ He'd been a damn fool not to let her explain. She'd tried, more times than he could count but in the end he'd clung to the hope that maybe, just maybe she'd forget about her past as he had his.

Only thing was, her past was still her present.

Anders dropped his fist, forgetting who lay sleeping behind him. Cringing he checked he hadn't woken her, kicking off his boots once he saw it was safe. He had to get out. He had to be alone – as alone as he could be, considering – and get this out of his system.

He couldn't believe it still got to him.

Walking quietly out to the balcony, he stretched. He felt listless. And so horribly useless. How was he to make any sort of a life, even if it was a half life with her still in his thoughts. In his mind.

His half life had become just that; a series of halves, almost-things patched together under the pretence of a whole. It worked for a while. There was justice. His thirty years quickly becoming twenty. His day and night.

Honestly, Anders thought, he hadn't felt like a whole person since becoming a Grey Warden. For a few glorious months he was somebody. He was useful, he was needed, an agent for everything good in this world. She'd smiled and laughed for no one else. For a few short months he had her all to himself.

He was still a Warden. That was for life, what little of it you had left.

Hawke would tell him he was useful, that she needed him here.

There was a lot of good he was fighting for.

But the bone-deep truth of it all, the reason why he couldn't let it go, those smudged little letters forming three stupid words – that was what halved him.

Anders leaned heavily against the stone railing, thinking in that moment of the Keep. No Viscount, no bronze statues, just a valley and mountains with the hopes and dreams of one small woman tied to its battered walls. His knuckles went white and he stared hard out at Kirkwall, in all its immenseness and tried to feel insignificant. Maybe that's what it was. He'd talked himself up too many times to strangers that he now thought he had rights. A right to her, to his happiness, to his freedom. A right to being a complete person.

There was a time where he knew everything as chance. Maker or no, he made his way and if that failed then that was that. There was always tomorrow. And yeah, that had helped on their way to Denerim. It hadn't helped nearly enough in the end, but Anders knew he still had that stubborn spirit. If he thought he had rights, then he was definitely still stubborn.

He exhaled and for once, really appreciated the climate. Nights like these in Vigil's Keep had chilled his bones and kept Pounce almost insufferably close. In Kirkwall it was mild. It was the same, it was warm, it was. Leaning on his forearms he saw that most of the lights in the city were out. It was late then; even the red lanterns seemed dim from this height.

Maybe if he went back and confronted her… Anders shook his head, knowing that wasn't an option. It never was. Every night he spent a second to consider it, and every night the answer was the same. There was no going back, not after the way he left. So really, there was no chance.

Why couldn't he drop it then!

Anders concentrated on the texture of the stone. It was old, ancient, engraved with the dirt of time, filling its miniscule cracks, milling across its surface. Sometimes he wondered if he could be stone. The statues in the Chantry had frightened him as a child but back then he hadn't even understood what magic was. If he was stone maybe he could be whole.

Time was nothing to stone. It would endure. Day or night, it didn't matter. Time would march on, leaving behind the fears and pestilence, the war and horror, the light and hope, everything would pass and stone would remain. Was that what it was to be whole?

No, he thought. Anders knew what whole was, and whole was a point in time he couldn't cross. Whole was when a king was just a king and an elf was just herself. He'd been whole and she in repair, and maybe that was one of the reasons it never worked out. One of the many, many reasons he'd thought of over the years.

The saddest part was he would wake up tomorrow and tonight would just be that. A night. Tomorrow he would grin lazily and kiss Hawke when she woke. He would stretch and grin, grin, grin. It was something that came easily in the light of the sun and it was something he was good at.

Maybe he should have spent each night looking forward to the next day. Perhaps it was a matter of waiting for the sun, clinging to her and praying to a Maker he only half-believed in.

It would be a lot better than all this self-pity.

There was no justice in pity, or jealousy, or regret. Justice, and the lack of it, was something he was suddenly seeing everywhere. He'd had his chance to say goodbye. He got his new life, his new friends, his new sun. It should have been enough.

Maybe he just hadn't tried hard enough. It wasn't right, to split himself like this. Hawke was worth more than half his time, half his life. She could make everything _better_. She was his better. Shouldn't he just surrender it all and be with her?

He'd done it before.

Anders lifted his weight off the balcony rail and re-entered his room, his eyes finding Hawke's shape easy in the low light. She hadn't stirred since he left his chair and he gently lowered himself to the empty side of the bed. He could worry about what she'd think of him half dressed in his robes tomorrow.

He pulled the blankets up and over and settled behind her. Instinctively Hawke seemed to fall into his warmth. It wasn't her he thought of when his fingers grazed her shoulder and the smallest of sighs escaped her lips.

Shutting his eyes he wondered what in Andraste's name he thought he was doing. Night was still over him, the moon, _her_, she was in his mind, a hollow voice, the same as Justice, always there, always. Anders pulled away from Hawke and stared hard at the ceiling, past the posts of the bed.

It was night.


End file.
